If We're Still Single
by tonicwater
Summary: Danny revisits the 'pact' he made with Mindy, five years on. AU. Potentially multi-chapter.


Danny leaned against Mindy's kitchen counter, sighing into a glass of whiskey. Every time he looked around at this, yet another Christmas party, he saw painful reminders of how pathetic his life was becoming. In the five years since the last time Mindy volunteered as host, he'd watched virtually everyone around him move on with their lives. Peter had been seeing Clara for over a year, and as far as everyone could tell a proposal was imminent. Across the room, a gleaming ring on her finger, a proud smile on his face as he showed some other guest photos of Sam on his first birthday, Jeremy and Betsy looked the picture of happily-married life. Danny shook his head, having long since given up trying to work out how those two ended up together. Not that he was one to judge. They were certainly a lot happier than he was.

The Christmas decorations were a glaring reminder, too, of how quickly 2017 had slipped past him. As the year was drawing to a close, he couldn't think of a single thing of note that had happened in his own life. He went on one (failed) date, bought a new coffee machine, and… that was pretty much it. Would that be all 2017 stood for when he looked back on his life, as the year of the Castellano Keurig?

How had he ended up here? How was it nearly 2018 and he was still single and childless? By now he could have – should have – been raising a pre-teen. Helping with Math homework, giving 'the talk', explaining to them why Springsteen was just _better_ than One Direction. Attending or even coaching Little League on Saturday mornings, rather than jogging past the occasional game and worrying that he looked like a pedophile.

And then the sight of Mindy walking over to her bedroom, probably to retrieve her charging phone, triggered a long neglected memory.

'_Danny, if we're still single in five years, and we haven't found anybody, can we make a pact?'_

_Danny inhaled sharply in anticipation. He didn't notice the words falling out of his mouth._

'_That we'll marry each other?' he finished. As soon as he heard it, and saw the frown spread across her features, his cheeks flushed crimson._

'_I…' Mindy hesitated._

'_Wait, what, is that not what you were going to say?' he smoothed his jeans with the palms of his hands, drawing his wrist to his brow. _

_Mindy smiled, taking his hand in hers. _

'_No, that's…exactly what I was going to say. It's just weird to hear you say it.'_

_Danny exhaled for what seemed like the first time in about thirty years, returning her smile._

'_Not that it matters, you know, either way. You're not going to be single in five years time. By then you'll probably be married to some guy who leaves Josh and every other jerk you've dated in the shade.'_

'_You're just saying that because you hope you don't have to marry me.'_

_He feigned offense._

'_Or because I wish you well, because I'm a good friend? A friend good enough to _marry_ you just so you're not alone?'_

'_That's the best kind of friend,' she smirked. 'So you'll shake on it?'_

'_Of course. But here's to not being obliged to fulfill it, because we both have better things going on.'_

_He shook her hand. His fingers lingered on hers for just a beat longer than necessary, but she didn't seem to notice._

Danny's mind returned to the present. He'd been wrong about Mindy. Yes, in the meantime she'd nearly married Casey, and she'd had a couple of more serious relationships to speak of, but no one ever seemed to stick anymore. He got the sense that Mindy was close to giving up. She'd never say it outright, no matter how close they'd become, simply because she was stubborn. But he could tell that with every new baby she delivered, her biological clock ticked louder. It was eating away at her. He saw her bittersweet expressions whenever Betsy brought Sam in to visit Jeremy at work.

He guessed she would have forgotten long ago about their little pact. She'd been fairly drunk and they'd never spoken about it again – why would she remember? And yet Danny found himself wondering what would happen if they actually followed through on it. Call him crazy, but it could work. Over the past couple of years they'd become quite close. Never _that_ close, albeit, but they were in a sense like an old married couple. Sharing each other's problems, bickering over what to watch on TV (in the doctor's lounge, of course), and occasionally him coming over to her place to fix the smoke alarm or assemble IKEA furniture. Slowly, their lives had become irrevocably intermingled without them even noticing.

Maybe it would do no harm to bring it up again, even just as a joke. Maybe it was the volume of alcohol he'd consumed in the past hour or two, but he couldn't see it destroying whatever kind of relationship they had together in one fell swoop. Was their weird arrangement worth maintaining at all? He didn't give himself enough time to think about it. He just made a beeline for Mindy's room.

'Danny?' Mindy's head shot up from her phone. Yep, he was right. She was sprawled out on her bed, heels kicked off, scrolling through Facebook. 'You can't just barge into my room! I could have been naked or something!'

'It's the middle of a party, why would you be changing your clothes? And it's not like we haven't both seen each other-'

'Don't remind me.'

'Woah, sorry, I didn't think my body would be a memory you were trying to suppress.'

He sat down at the end of her bed.

'I was more thinking along the lines of you seeing me, than the other way around.'

'We don't need to go through this _again_, your body is beautiful. Or at least, it was the last time I saw it, however long ago that was.'

She smiled, rolling her eyes.

'Danny Castellano, such a charmer.'

'Why are you even in here? You do realise you're the host, right?'

'Yeah, but it was getting me down, you know? I was thinking about the last time I hosted this dumb party,' Danny shuffled, straightening his back, 'and how it was such an utter disaster, what with Josh and his psycho other girlfriend, but how my life was still in a _better _place then than it is now. Plus, I mean, it's like everyone in the practice is happy and in a relationship except me. And you. It's depressing.'

'Tell me about it, I was feeling the exact same way,' Danny admitted, lying down across the bed, staring up at the ceiling. Well, at least they were on the same page about one thing. He swallowed. 'I was actually thinking about that party too, and the conversation we had in your room that night.'

'Oh yeah, I have a vague recollection of it,' she smirked.

'You do?'

'Yeah. You're trying to get me to bring it up, aren't you?' She laughed. 'You have to say it, you started it. I was actually kind of wondering just now, if you would…'

'What are you talking about?'

'Don't play dumb with me. If you're going to ask me, just ask me.'

Danny shot up and looked her in the eye.

'I'm really not sure we're talking about the same thing.'

She cocked her head playfully.

'I think we are. I know I was kind of drunk but I remember the whole conversation pretty well. Just say it, old man. Oh, did I just touch a nerve?'

'A little bit,' he smiled. 'Okay fine, it was playing on my mind, you know? We made that…pact, and now it's been five years. I'm not saying, hey, this means we _have_ to follow through on it. I'm just more thinking about how we didn't think we'd ever still be single at this point, that this is where we'd be five years down the line.'

'Would it be the worst thing in the world?' Mindy said quietly, after a beat.

'What, for us to be married?' Danny retorted incredulously. 'Min, have you _met_ us?'

'Yeah, we pretty much function like a married couple already though, when you think about it. Just without the sex.'

'I feel like you've been thinking a lot about this. Which is weird.' Not that he wasn't doing the same. 'Also, not particularly romantic of you either.'

'Danny, being romantic is something I left behind in my early thirties. It's sad, but true. Right now, what I want is a guy who'll take care of me and I'll take care of him and we'll have babies before we're old and gross. I mean, you know this. We've talked about this before.'

'Never in the context of _me_ being the guy!' Danny was taken aback at how open and forward about all this she was behaving. As if it wasn't an entirely ridiculous idea.

'Why shouldn't you be the guy?' She looked at him seriously. Holy shit, this just got really real.

'Min, I'm sorry I brought this up. I didn't think you'd actually take the whole marriage thing seriously. This is crazy!' He tugged at his collar.

'Oh wow, okay, sorry to _offend_ you by suggesting that you might make a decent husband and father to my children. It's not like this was _my idea_ in the first place anyway!'

'What? Yes it was, you said you wanted to make this pact in the first place!' Danny matched her defensiveness.

'No, asshole, I was going to say we should make a pact that we _kill ourselves_ in 5 years, if we were still single. You're the one who brought up a _marriage pact_!'

'Only because that's where I thought you were going with it! You didn't correct me so you're as culpable as me here!'

He expected her to bite back immediately. Instead, she sighed, and her eyes focused back on her phone.

'Danny, I think when we get to a point where we're blaming each other for our mutual marriage proposal we know that this is a bad idea. Just…go, okay?' She bit her lip, not breaking her glassy gaze at her Twitter feed once.

'Fine,' Danny muttered, marching over to the door. He paused for a moment, before shaking his head and leaving without another word. He grabbed his coat and slipped out of the party altogether. No one noticed.

As soon as the door shut behind him, Mindy let out a long sob into her pillow.

Engrossed in a stack of paperwork, Mindy barely heard the knock at her office door. She'd come in that morning to find her 9.15 appointment cancelled, and figured she'd make use of the time. She wasn't sure what aging had done to her but recently she'd become a bit more conscientious about filing paperwork on time. It was weird. She didn't like it.

'Come in,' she called absent-mindedly.

He stood in the half-open doorway for a moment, unsure whether or not to proceed. This drew her attention.

'Oh, hi Danny.'

'These are for you,' he said, offering a bearclaw, a cup of coffee, and a smile. He knew she'd taken to eating more healthily recently, but also that she was weak-willed. So she probably hadn't indulged this morning, but she would welcome an excuse to do so.

He could read her like a book. At least when it came to food.

'Thanks,' she mumbled. 'Is this some kind of peace offering or something?'

'Pretty much.' He set the items down in front of her and took a seat. 'Look, Min, I'm sorry. I guess I wasn't expecting your reaction and it threw me off. I thought you'd treat the whole pact thing like a joke and I hadn't prepared myself for you actually considering it a possibility.' She didn't look up. 'Truthfully,' he continued, 'it scared me. It's one thing to think about potentially marrying someone in your head as a hypothetical situation, something completely else to hear her say she's up for it. After all this time, too.'

Mindy sighed.

'I guess I'm sorry too. I was pretty forward about it, or whatever. But I had the opposite problem. I'd thought about it so much that I'd forgotten that we'd never actually discussed our feelings for each other at all before, you know. I was talking about this as if it made complete sense – which it sort of did, in my head.'

Danny nodded understandingly.

'I get that. Maybe that's where we should start, then. With talking, working out where we stand. I mean, I know we know each other pretty well by now-'

'_Pretty _well? Danny, come on. We're practically best friends,' she interjected.

'Fine, we know each other very well. But you don't just make the leap from best friend to fiancé. Maybe we should, you know, be traditional about something for once in our lives.'

'Ok Danny I know you're Catholic and all-'

'What? No, I'm not talking about, no! Min, I may have been raised Catholic but I'm not freakin' devout. No, I'm talking about trying…why don't we just start with a date?'

'For a wedding?'

'Alright, what exactly about what I have literally _just_ said would imply I'm ready to set a date for our wedding? I meant _going_ on a date. You know, a real, dinner-and-a-something date. I know we don't need to get to know each other as people, but we don't really know what it's like to go out together, is all.' He shrugged, and she nodded.

'That sounds really cute, Danny,' she beamed. 'I always knew you were a romantic at heart.'

He rolled his eyes, getting up from his chair.

'So, pick you up at 8?'

'Sounds perfect.'

Danny grinned like a teenager who'd just successfully asked a girl to prom.

'I guess I'll see you then,' he said, before making a swift exit.

He couldn't wipe that goofy smile from his face all day. He couldn't shake that feeling that something special had just begun.

2017 had, in the eleventh hour, proven itself to be significant, and he had never before been so happy to have been wrong.


End file.
